ther, and apply to it the most awful term the
vocabulary of justice contains! Your worship will remember that on that
very interesting and important case a document was missing, of such a
character that the main feature of the case seemed actually to hang upon
it. This was no less than the deathbed confession of Noonan, formally
taken before a justice of the peace, Mr. Styles, and written with all
the accurate regard to circumstances the law exacts. Mr. Styles, the
magistrate who took the deposition, was killed by a fall from his horse
the following week; his clerk being ill, the individual who wrote the
case was Con Cregan. Your worship may bear in mind that this man,
when called to the witness box, denied all knowledge of this dying
confession; asserted that what he took down in writing were simply some
brief and unsatisfactory notes of the affray, all to the advantage
of the M'Quades, and swore that Mr. Styles, who often alluded to the
document as a confession, was entirely in error, the whole substance
of it being unimportant and vague; some very illegible and-ill-written
notes corroborating which were produced in court as the papers in
question.

"Noonan being dead, and Mr. Styles also, the whole case rested on the
evidence of Cregan; and although, your worship, the man's character
for veracity was not of that nature among the persons of his own
neighborhood to--"

"Confine yourself to the case, sir," said the judge, "without
introducing matter of mere common report."

"I am in a position to prove my assertion," said Morissy, triumphantly.
"I hold here in my hand the abstracted documents, signed and sealed by
Mr. Styles, and engrossed with every item of regularity. I have more: a
memorandum purporting to be a copy of a receipt for eighteen pounds
ten shillings, received by Cregan from Jos. M'Quade, the wages of this
crime; and, if more were necessary, a promissory note from M'Quade for
an additional sum of seven pounds, at six months' date. These are the
papers which I am prepared to prove in court; this the evidence which
a few minutes back I tendered in vain before you; and there," said he,
turning with a vindictive solemnity to where my father was standing,
pale, but collected, "there's the man who, distinguished by your
worship's confidence, I now arraign for the suppression of this
evidence, and the composition of a felony!"

If Mr. Morissy was not perfectly correct in his law, there was still
quite enoug